As a conventional light emitting device, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2006-351809 (Patent Document 1), for example, discloses a light emitting device designed to enhance the light use efficiency by extracting light emitted from a light emitting element chip without attenuating the light by a light extracting and increasing component. The light emitting device disclosed in Patent Document 1 has a light emitting element chip formed of a light emitting diode, and a light extracting and increasing component optically coupled to an emission surface of the light emitting element chip, for increasing the amount of light extracted from the light emitting element chip and controlling light distribution using refraction.
In addition, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-286480 (Patent Document 2) discloses a fluorescent filler designed to enable production of an optical element such as a light emitting diode having enhanced light emission performance and reliability, and a method for forming the fluorescent filler. Patent Document 2 describes, as the prior art, an LED element having an LED chip, a drop covering the LED chip and including a mixture of a fluorescent compound particle and an epoxy, and a transparent optical dome covering the drop.